It’s Hotter Than Hell. Make It Stop.
I LIVE IN HELL. Dante Alighieri quit on us early in describing the nine levels of Inferno in his 14th century Divine Comedy. The 10th level is my boyhood home town of Newhall, California, 91322. I’ve never much of a fan of mercury’s broiling tantrums stretching from early July to mid-October. At least for the summers, tongue lolling out, I’ve been trying to migrate to some destination cooler.
Spring was different in Newhall this year. We had all of 14 minutes of the season. Uncannily, it gets immediately sizzling right on the Fourth of July. The heat stays stubbornly for 100 days. Then, yippee coyote, it’s pleasant in Newhall for 265 days.
Ish.
A dear darling friend tried to convince me that this heat nonsense some people call, “Summer,” is a recent event. He blamed the usual suspects: Climate Change, polar bear farts, Republicans, confident heterosexual white males, my rusting, ozone-depleting pickup truck. Besides pest, I wear another hat, that of local historian. I assured him it’s been blankety-blank stupid hot here since before the internal combustion engine and that there’s no record of Ursus maritimus (polar bear) making my ZIP code his home.
Our local newspaper, the swashbuckling and Mighty Newhall Signal, penned a brief and delightful description of summers here. It was in the 1930s. Then editor/publisher, A.B. “Dad” Thatcher, wrote a little ditty in his front-page column, the Jin Jer Jar. It was during a Depression-era heat wave and an old cowboy walked into Dad’s office, then on Main Street. The cattle puncher had a news scoop.
“It was so hot yesterday, I saw a coyote chasing a rabbit,” said the cowpoke,” doffing his Stetson and wiping his brow. “And, they were both walking …”
Farmers that summer quipped they were going into the dried fruit business.
For decades, I’ve been attempting The Big Vamoose from darn hot here. After high school, a fellow chum from The Worthless Sons Of The Wealthy Landowners and I investigated renting a house in Malibu. This was 1969. We drove to the beach, searching the telephone posts for “House For Rent” signs. That’s how you advertised back then — handwritten cardboard signs nailed to utility poles. The nerve of those wealthy beach bums. A three-bedroom house, fridge, stove, furniture, supply your own beach bunnies, on — that’s — ON — the beach: $500 a month. Outrageous. Only the sons of the Aga Khan could afford $500 a month.
I was young, ferocious and immortal. Used to get in a run in the middle of an August day, 111 degrees. No shirt. No sun block. Sprint 5 miles. Leap over aged fallen Presbyterians and rattlesnakes. I’m approaching middle age now. I wait until after 11 o’clock at night to pay $19 for a pint of ice cream at 7-Eleven not because I’m afraid of passing out but don’t want people to see me sobbing in the middle of the day because my clothes are on fire.
Back at the ranch, we had an Olympic-size pool and the nearest shady oak was 25 yards away. We had an August where EVERY day was over 100 degrees with a two-week stretch where the daytime high never dropped below 108. Care for a truly touching pity story from the past president of the Worthless Sons Of The Wealthy Landowners? We had to buy two, 100-pound blocks of ice to cool the pool down. Icebergs in Newhall in August.
And you ungrateful kids today think you have it tough.
That was the summer my bride was on a game show and won a year’s supply of whiskey sour mix. The actor, Victor McLaglen, in the Western, “Fort Apache,” played Sgt. Festus Mulcahy. The sarge was ordered by Henry Fonda to destroy three 55-gallon barrels of cheap, semi-poisonous Indian reservation whiskey. McLaglen saluted, sighed, held up a tin cup and poignantly told his fellow sergeants: “‘Destroy it!’ he says. Well boys. We’ve a man’s work ahead of us this day!”
I seem to recall, sitting by the pool, watching the ice melt in a blink and the whiskey sour cocktail soon bubbling in summer’s early evening setting sun.
Darn summer. It can’t even rain right. Every once in a while, we’d get summer precipitation. Rain drops shouldn’t be boiling, should they? You should feel — refreshed — in a Take Me Away, Calgon Bouquet sort of fashion, not like you’re wrapped in ski clothes, sitting in a sauna. Have the weather gods never read an ounce of poetry? Rain needs to be cool. It shouldn’t arrive in the form of devilish golf balls.
“Golf balls” is the universal measurement for hail. “Hail the size of golf balls,” weathermen always sagely say. Never, “… hail the size of albino gorilla boogers,” “cocktail olives,” “snapping turtle eggs,” or “Michelle Obama’s …” achoo, had to sneeze, couldn’t finish the sentence.
We had a freak hailstorm back when we were ag country. It was 1955. Thousands of migrating swallows were killed in Canyon Country. It wasn’t Swallow Hunting Season. The hailstorm killed them, leaving the ground, highway and streams littered with their little bodies.
Speaking of birds, here’s a little-known fact. A chicken’s body temperature is not 98.6. It’s 105. A degree warmer, they keel over and die. Many times in the 20th century, local farmers added another chore to their Things To Do list — Water The Chickens.
Late August, 1944, was worse. The mercury hit 121 in Downtown Newhall, up to 135 in Canyon Country.
What have I done to offend the archangels that I still don’t have my summer beach house? Sure. I can visit the Pacific. But, it strikes me that I should be able to fall asleep, listening to the waves softly crashing on the shore, windows open, sea breeze, it’s 62 degrees. Better? Unlike getting up in the morning in Newhall, my truck isn’t a stain on the driveway, a melted puddle of steering wheel plastic, metal and seat cushion Naugahyde.
If it were up to me, I’d pass a law, declaring that the maximum daily temperature here in what old-timers called, “New Hell,” year round, shall be 68 degrees, with soft sea breezes and free lemonade for all.
Alas, I’m sure lawmakers in Sacramento would find a way to put the Kabash on my swell plan and ensure the continuation of my personal suffering in heat prostration
